


Twelve Days of Christmas: Day 6

by serendipityxxi



Series: 12 Days of Haven OT3 Christmas [6]
Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: Bad Cooking, Christmas, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Multi, Yams, sweet potatoes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 13:50:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5499416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serendipityxxi/pseuds/serendipityxxi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A non-canon-compliant fluffy Audrey/Nathan/Duke OT3 holiday prompt extravaganza!<br/>On the sixth day of Christmas my true loves gave to me... six pounds of potatoes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twelve Days of Christmas: Day 6

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is non canon compliant and takes place approximately two years after the Troubles are hand-wavey over. Audrey, Nathan and Duke went on a world tour on the Rouge after the Troubles ended and Haven was mostly rebuilt. This is their first Christmas back in Haven. All the fics in this series can be read as stand alones.
> 
>  **The prompt for this one was:** “hi we’re neighbours and omg are you alright i could smell cooking burning - whoaaa now that’s just embarrassing? step aside i’ll handle this”  
> But no one is neighbors in this bc they're all together. SO THERE! ;)

On the sixth day of Christmas my true loves gave to me…

“Six pounds of potatoes?” Audrey’s eyebrows are at her hairline. She knows she shouldn’t have let Nathan talk her into doing this early Christmas dinner but Duke will be busy at the Gull on the day of the holiday (they all three of them will but Duke doesn’t know that yet) as he’s hosting a Christmas dinner for those families that were hit hardest by the Troubles. It’s been almost two years since they ended but some people are still struggling to find their feet. Audrey loves Duke for his desire to make amends, though most are not his mistakes to make amends for. She does not love his taste in fine dining when it involves peeling six pounds of potatoes.

It’s not like Audrey or Nathan can’t cook it’s just that cooking is not their forte. They each have their special dishes they can do well but an entire Christmas dinner with all the fixings is not something either of them have attempted before.

“Can’t we just make mashed potatoes from a box?” she whines at Nathan who looks at her like she suggested they swap out the turkey for alligator meat. She’s immediately tempted to make that suggestion but who knows where they’d even find alligator meat in Haven. Dwight probably would know… Duke probably has a contact for that matter.

Nathan firmly hands her the peeler and goes back to work doing...something gross with the bird. Audrey prefers her turkeys already cooked and purchased from a store thank you very much, but not for Duke’s secret special not-on-Christmas Christmas dinner. She just hopes they can get all this done before he comes back and notices they’ve put the knives in the wrong drawer and that Nathan used the rice cooker again. She doesn’t know what Duke has against the rice cooker but hey, she’s not going to stop that kind of quality bickering from happening, it’s good entertainment. Besides she thinks Duke might feel it’s worth it if he gets coconut-mango rice pudding out of the deal.

By the time the potatoes are peeled and boiling merrily Audrey feels like she might have carpal tuber syndrome. Nathan is happily stuffing away, onions and garlic, apricots and pancetta, rosemary and nutmeg, the ground pork he browned earlier, she’s pretty sure she sees an entire orange go in there.

Everything is going fine until Nathan’s phone rings. It’s Stan. He wouldn’t have called but he needs help dealing with one of the old families in Haven and they’ll only answer to the chief.

Nathan hesitates.

Audrey rolls her eyes. “Go. I can handle this, it’s all on timers anyway,” she assures him.

He continues to hesitate anyway.

“Y’know I lived on my own for five hundred years without burning a house down, buddy,” she tells him.

“That we know of,” Nathan teases and presses a quick kiss against her scowling lips.

“He who tried to live on beef jerky, bad coffee and pancakes alone should not be casting stones,” she warned him.

Nathan laughs. It gives Audrey the same small thrill every time she manages to make him do that, no matter how many times she’s accomplished it before.

“Parker,” he says, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her in close, “you once ate seven cupcakes in one sitting. You’ve only got vitamin-deficient legs to stand on,” he says against her lips, stealing another kiss while he’s there.

She sighs when they break apart. “So what you’re saying is that neither of us is qualified to be here but you’re the only one that gets to leave?”

Nathan glances from his phone back to her, clearly torn.

Audrey sighs and steps back. “It’s fine. I got this,”

“Turkey goes in the oven in fifteen minutes, take the ham out when you do that,” he instructs, like she didn’t read him the instructions off her phone three hours ago when this mess started.

“Aye aye, Captain,” she salutes and he rolls his eyes.

“Back as soon as I can,” Nathan promises. Audrey kisses him one last time and shoves him out the door.

And it is fine. People do this every day all over the world. They make dinner and okay maybe she’s never made anything as elaborate as all… this. Audrey glances around the kitchen at the mess and the mountain of dishes and is momentarily daunted but then she finds her courage again. She’s got this. Duke deserves this. For every cup of coffee and meal he’s forced on the two of them, for every missed dinner and work related disappointment. It’s not enough to say thank you for all the times he’s backed them up, or put his ass on the line for them, or sorry for all the things she’s asked of him but it’s something. She sees him, sees all he does and she wants him to know that, wants him to feel valued by putting in the effort to do something she knows he values.

So she sets to work mashing the potatoes and for a time all is well. She’s managed to mix in the butter and chives when she hears the hiss of the yams or maybe it’s the sweet potatoes boiling over. Damnit! But it’s just a small setback. She can handle it. She hustles to clean that up and maybe lights the kitchen towel on fire. Just a little! She throws that in the sink just in time to realize that the yam pot is boiling over again!

“Seriously?” she demands of the pot.

She pours out more of the water onto the still burning kitchen towel which works out nicely actually and then plops the pan back onto the stove.

Audrey has to relight the burner three times before it catches. “Stupid, freakin, ancient stove! Just light!” She commands. The flame catches and she’s relieved until the smoke alarm starts wailing sending her pulse spiking. She immediately regrets making that crack about not burning the house down but the stove isn’t on fire so she scans the kitchen and discovers the still smoldering (how is it still smoldering?) kitchen towel has set off the fire alarm.

She turns on the tap full blast on the damn kitchen towel, opens the window to let out the smoke. Outside darkness is falling, the late afternoon light being swallowed by long blue shadows. Time is running out. Where is Nathan?

She gets up on one of the dining room chairs with the broom to press the freakin button to make the beeping stop!

There’s about a minute of blessed silence - just enough time for her to drag the chair back into the dining room and go back to her potatoes - before the alarm goes off again. Not because there’s any smoke in the kitchen any more but because it clearly just hates Christmas and Christmas dinners in general. Audrey has a lot of fellow feeling but the damn thing needs to stop making that noise.

She pulls the chair back into place and climbs up. Again. She curses Garland Wuornos and his ridiculously tall ceilings as she aims the broom handle and misses. When she finally gets down all hell has broken loose in her kitchen. The timer on the toaster oven has apparently long gone off and the rolls they had baking in there are almost toast. To make matters worse the water in the pan with the yams (or are they sweet potatoes? Audrey does not know.) has boiled down so that they are scorched and sticking to the pan and then Audrey spots the turkey still sitting on the counter when it was supposed to have gone into the oven forty minutes ago!

Duke is due home in two and a half hours, the turkey’s supposed to cook for three. Damnit, they’d had it timed! Who decided this would be a good idea? Where is Nathan? She wasn’t supposed to have to do this on her own!

Audrey slams the toaster oven door open and reaches in without a thought to pull the tray of rolls out. The pain sears into her fingertips without warning making her drop the pan onto the floor, slamming the edge into her toe. Audrey swears violently, hopping on one foot and waving her burnt fingers. The yams are still burning, the turkey isn’t going to be done in time and the ham is probably burnt, she just dropped the rolls all over the floor and she might have really burnt her thumb. It’s all a big mess, who on earth thought she could do this? She can’t do Christmas! She’s never cooked a meal like this in her life! She doesn’t even like Christmas! Why did she listen to Nathan?

And then the door behind her swings open and Audrey shrieks, grabbing for a knife but what she comes up with is a spatula. Which is a good thing because there’s a puddle of water in front of the sink and she slips in it going ass over tea kettle to land sprawled on the floor.

Nathan’s eyes are wide, mouth open in an ‘o’ of surprise that would have made her laugh under any other circumstance. Instead she buries her face in her hands and takes long deep breaths.

“Parker?” Nathan asks.

Just then the smoke from the damn sweet potatoes sets the alarm off yet again and Audrey cannot help it anymore. She bursts into hysterical laughter. Nathan flicks off the stove and swats the alarm with the end of the broom while standing on the floor, without needing a chair, because of course he doesn’t need a stupid chair to reach. He and Duke are just freakishly tall like pine trees or something. Maybe that’s Haven’s secret. They’re all secretly pine trees. Audrey starts to laugh even harder.

Nathan approaches with caution and holds out a hand to help her up as if he’s not sure she won’t bite it. Audrey’s not sure herself until she wraps her good hand around his long fingers. They pull and she slips and then he slips and they both go tumbling to the floor again. Nathan collects an elbow to the head for his trouble and Audrey bangs her tailbone and she cannot stop laughing. Nathan starts to chuckle too and then there’s the sound of a car door slamming outside and they laugh even harder. That is how Duke finds them when he walks into the house two and a half hours early.

“What happened to my kitchen?” he demands from the doorway and then he spots them leaning on each other on the floor, giggling and a slow, fond smile takes over his face.

“Are you two alright?” he asks, crouching down and brushing the hair out of Audrey’s face. He puts a hand on Nathan’s shoulder.

Audrey hiccups, peering at Duke out of the corner of her eye, her forehead still pressed into Nathan’s neck.

“Surprise!” Audrey giggles.

Duke shakes his head, affection shining in his eyes.

“We’re fine,” Nathan assures him.

“But the yams are a goner,” Audrey informs him and bursts into more giggles.

Nathan chuckles harder into her hair.

“What yams?” Duke asks and Audrey cannot stop laughing to answer.

Duke gets to his feet and hauls them up one by one, running his hands over them to make sure they’re not damaged. Nathan explains what they were doing while Duke gets the ice pack out and presses it gently on Audrey’s singed fingers. He looks touched, his eyes a little damp when Nathan is through and Audrey feels awful. He’s grateful for this disaster of a dinner. He deserves so much more than this.

He inspects the damage to Audrey’s fingers carefully, so carefully and blows cool air over them, making her shiver. She wants to pull her hands away and shake him, tell him he should want more than this but Duke is a person who sees the effort too.

He smiles at her and she knows he knows she tried, she really did. He kisses the palm of her hand and pronounces she’ll be able to keep the fingers.

“Thanks,” she says wryly, but she means it and he knows how she means it too. She sees it in his face as he pushes her onto a stool by the counter.

Nathan sweeps up the rolls while Duke throws out the pan of, “Sweet potatoes, not yams. Yams are white, these are orange, Audrey. Have you ever even had a sweet potato or a yam in your life?”

Audrey laughs at the indignation in his voice and will later realize this is when Duke decided to get them vitamins for Christmas.

Duke takes the ham out with oven mitts. It is mercifully still intact though the edges of the pineapple slices are a little brown. Nathan sticks the turkey in the oven. Audrey watches her boys clean up the disaster area with fondness for a bit before she remembers the mashed potatoes!


End file.
